


One of us.

by Yeziel_Moore



Series: Dancing With Angels [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Blasphemy, Canonical Character Death, Family, Gen, but they got better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 01:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeziel_Moore/pseuds/Yeziel_Moore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if God was one of us...</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of us.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired in the song "One of Us", Glee version, from season 2, episode 3. It's a beautiful song and you should listen to it.  
> I realize that God is a touchy subject at best for many people. I'm sorry if this one-shot offends somebody, but if that's the case I don't know what you're doing here, reading Supernatural of all things.  
>  **Glee Version:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyF6jEMc8Yg  
>  **Joan Osborne Version:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USR3bX_PtU4

  
**Disclaimer:** _I don't own the song "One of Us", nor do I own Supernatural or Harry Potter, regardless of how much I plead. The rest is mine.  
_ **Words:** _4050._

* * *

 

_If God had a name, what would it be_  
And would you call it to his face  
If you were faced with him in all his glory  
What would you ask if you had just one question

The apocalypse was over, the sun was shining high in the sky, bathing the not-quite-battlefield with alien warmth, and the sky was a stunning shade of blue, the same shade of Castiel's - _Jimmy's, whispered a traitorous voice_ \- eyes. That was where the beauty ended. The grass, yellowy and overgrown in uneven patches, was burned in some places while other parts were soaked in blood, angel blood.  _Castiel's blood_ , punctuated the voice. Nearby was Bobby Singer's body, sprawled haphazardly in an undignified heap, neck twisted in an unnatural angle, glazed eyes defiant even in death. That old dog was probably cursing the Devil in Heaven and generally being a pain in the ass for the douches up there. Maybe. Dean could hope anyway.

The last corpse was by far the worse to the dying hunter. It was small in stature even though the difference in age between both of them was barely a year, with Dean being the oldest. His midnight-black hair was matted with his blood and plastered to his face in an uncomplimentary way. His smooth and porcelain-like skin was stained in the same way and largely unmarred with the exception of a large gash on his forehead that had nearly scalped the man. His emerald eyes were glazed, much like Bobby's, but even in death they retained an otherworldly look to them. Almost as if the power behind them was still there. But that was impossible, wistful thinking on Dean's part, especially with a fist-shaped hole where his heart used to be.

His name was Harry James Potter, once again saviour of an ungrateful and ignorant world and a distant cousin of the Winchester brothers.

The dead trees all around them shuffled slightly in a chilly breeze, somehow managing to add to the desolate feeling of the entire situation.

Dean almost cried at the scene, would've cried, had he remembered how. Whether it was the agonizing pain he was in or an effect of his broken psyche the fact remained, and so no tears were shed for his fallen comrades. His family.

He didn't let himself think of Sam. His stupid, self-sacrificing, little brother, who at the moment was more than likely being tormented by those two poor excuses of holy beings in the deepest, crueller pit of Hell. Let's not forget that little detail.

Dean's vision suddenly blurred. He sluggishly blinked his only functional eye, not quite sure of the reason for trying to stay awake. Everybody he gave a damn about was dead and he was damn sure he was on his merry way towards the same end. It didn't take a genius of Sam's calibre to figure that out. He was bleeding everywhere after all, inside and outside. And no, he wasn't talking in that metaphorical and girly way Sammy was so fond of.

While fading in and out of consciousness, Dean didn't notice the small body of his cousin disappear quietly, like a mirage in a desert.

_What if God was one of us_  
Just a slob like one of us  
Just a stranger on the bus  
Trying to make his way home

One moment Harry Potter laid there, a broken and cooling corpse, and then he wasn't. He just faded out of existence and less than a second later he reappeared in the same fashion, only this time he was neither hurt nor a corpse. There wasn't even a spot of dirt in the rather plain clothes he favoured.

He blinked and looked around slowly, almost groggily one would say if not for the sharpness denoted in his gem-like eyes, eyes that took in the littlest details. It was those brilliant, crystal clear and entirely too aware eyes that would give him away if somebody knew what to look for. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there was nobody around for miles to see him.

With deliberate steps, Harry vanished the distance between himself and Dean. He crouched in front of the man and silently took note of all the little details he had missed while dead. It was obvious by the frown on his face that Harry didn't like what he saw. The older hunter was unconscious, not really surprising considering the impressive array of injuries he had obtained, the problem was that he was slipping, fading away much too fast for that kind of injury.

That led him to only one conclusion. Dean Winchester had finally reached the end of his rope and had given up. Harry rubbed his forehead in annoyance. It was understandable, really, but he wasn't going to let a member of his family, one of his precious children, give up the fight. Not like this, never like this. Dean still had much to live for... Correction, he would've much to live for, once he resurrected some more people and finally put this entire mess to rest.

A finger to make skin on skin contact, facilitating the flow of a power he hadn't used in almost three decades, a flash of pure white light and Dean was in pristine condition. At least on the outside. Psychological trauma was another matter entirely, one he was hesitant to meddle with because of how easy it was to break or completely annihilate a mind, by accident even.

Dean's own green eyes opened, confused at first, relieved afterwards, disbelieving and wary at last.

_If God had a face what would it look like_  
And would you want to see  
If seeing meant that you would have to believe  
In things like heaven and in jesus and the saints and all the prophets

"Who... no, w _hat_  are you?"

The being with Harry's face, voice, countenance and just about everything that made his cousin, smiled. It was a small, benign smile, one that churned and twisted Dean's insides because it was completely Harry but, at the same time, it  _wasn't_. There was something different, something  _more_ , and suddenly Dean wasn't sure that he wanted to know just what creature had managed to take Harry's place so thoroughly.

"I'm me Dean. I've always been me, but now I'm complete," was 'Harry's' answer, which, honestly, didn't make any kind of sense to the hunter. "Now stay there for a while and rest."

It wasn't an order, not really, but Dean almost snapped at attention. Dean licked his lips nervously. Something wasn't right here, not right at all and he was powerless to stop it. He was too tired, emotionally stretched to snapping point and feeling like he was barely hanging by the frazzled threads of his tortured sanity. The sight of his not-cousin, alive and well, didn't help at all.

He watched as the thing moved towards Bobby's body, helpless and complete unable to either move or voice a complaint. He didn't miss a thing, though. From the graceful and almost fluid movements, to the subtle waves of barely restrained power that oozed from the petite body of his cousin. He took what little comfort he could from the fact that the being was purposely restraining the flow of energy that could so easily crush him like he was nothing more than a speck of dust. Could that mean that his cousin was somewhere in there and was protecting him? It was a nice, if completely ridiculous, thought.

Another flash of light and Bobby was sitting there, very much alive and looking as if he had somehow entered the twilight zone. Which Dean guessed wasn't too far from their current reality. He saw Harry's lips move but couldn't hear a thing as the wind carried his voice away from him. He saw Bobby's confused and wary expression. He saw the way Bobby's body subtly tensed as he realized that the Harry in front of him wasn't their Harry but some _thing_ else, something insanely dangerous and, with their rotten luck, unkillable. He saw the same helplessness he felt reflected in the jaded eyes of his surrogate father, because that was what the older hunter had became at some point. He saw the thing smile and pat Bobby in the head as if the other was merely a child in need of comfort.

Dean couldn't comprehend that understanding but sad - _so damn sad_ \- smile on Harry's face. Monsters just didn't smile like that! It was way out of character. They weren't supposed to take his cousin skin for their own purpose either.

He strangled the hope that maybe,  _maybe_ , this was Harry, as impossible as that was.

_What if God was one of us_  
Just a slob like one of us  
Just a stranger on the bus  
Trying to make his way home  
He's trying to make his way home  
Back up to heaven all alone  
Nobody calling on the phone  
Except for the pope maybe in Rome

Castiel was confused. Not that  _that_  was terribly uncommon, it was in fact the only feeling that had loyally accompanied him all the way from the beginning to the end. It was an established fact that practically everything from the human world confused him; from the many contraptions they had developed over the course of two thousand years, to their weird rituals and the simplest of feelings. Being killed by his own family - _twice, mind you_ \- was oddly normal in comparison to the picture in front of his eyes.

Dean was sitting on the dead and overgrown grass, back resting on the side of his beloved car and a myriad of feelings dancing in his tired eyes that belied the lack of expression in his face. Physically he seemed okay, which was a mystery to Castiel. Shouldn't he be at least a little battered? Or did Sam manage to wrench control from Lucifer before anything dreadful happened? More dreadful that his rather painful dead. It seemed unbelievable. Almost as unbelievable as the total complacence that seemed to have overtaken the, as of now, last Winchester.

Next was Bobby, who was behaving exactly like Dean, except that his gaze was rapidly shifting from wary to angry to stormy to sad, confused, slightly hopeful and so on. That intense gaze was focused on the third living person in the cemetery. Castiel turned to look and his breath caught in his throat so fast that he chocked and almost swallowed his vessel's tongue.

It was Harry Potter but not. Not anymore. Castiel had never seen Him in person, had never even talked to Him, but there was no mistaking it. No angel worth their wings would fail to realize who Harry Potter really was, at least not now, not when His power was free from bounds of any kind. The word escaped his chapped lips before he could reconnect his brain. Awe, love, pain, bitterness and the littlest bit of accusation filled those six letters with so much weight that he thought he may drown under it. Maybe he was still dead after all, for this could not be anything but a dream.

"Father..."

_If God had a face what would it look like_  
And would you want to see  
If seeing meant that you would have to believe  
In things like heaven and in jesus and the saints and all the prophets  


And Harry smiled. Seeing his fledging, the youngest of all his angels, was a blessing, so to speak.

Castiel was a real character, truly different from his brothers and sisters since before his creation. Vivacious and inquisitive, that was the way he was always supposed to be, the way he hadn't been for the longest time.

Seeing the weariness, the wariness, the sadness and the hurt that he himself had helped to put in those glowing eyes, Harry couldn't help but think that nothing was as it was supposed to be lately.

"What the Hell dude? Father? You gotta be shittin' me! How in the world is my cousin a friggin' god, and not just any god, but  _The_  God! That's... that's... It can't be, damnit!"

And so Dean Winchester was back, almost. It was about time really, even if it did cut him off when he was about to reassure his little angel. He huffed and sent a glare towards the youngest hunter present. There was no real heat behind the glare but Dean couldn't help the shiver of fear that run through his spine. Harry's gaze softened a fraction of a second later and something akin to regret filled those glowing pools of ageless power.

He may have never been human at His core, but He had lived a complete, if short, life as a human in a human body with very human feelings. Although the body He had now wasn't quite human anymore as a mortal body couldn't hope to contain even a quarter of His power. It truly wasn't much, because, at the end of the day, God wasn't human and nothing He did could change that. What He had done was walk the proverbial mile in their shoes. Harry's life, barely a blink in the order of things, had bore unexpected but not unwelcomed results. It had given him understanding on what His second sons went through every day and a family. Somewhere along the line Harry had gained a family and He found that He didn't want to lose it just yet. That meant an explanation.

The need for said explanation was solidified when Dean said one word, just one word that covered everything, stripped Him of every pretence, pierced all of His excuses.

_If God had a name, what would it be_  
And would you call it to his face  
If you were faced with him in all his glory  
What would you ask if you had just one question  


"Why?"

Dean found he could say no more, add nothing else. His body was brand new  _-again-_  but his voice, his brain, failed him. He was just too tired of everything. Thirty years old and he felt as if he had lived a century, which wasn't too far off the line when you counted those forty years in Hell.

Harry sighed and slumped in a way that was eerily human and that served to remind the two humans as well as the angel that this Divinity had spent years, decades even, walking around in a human skin.

He started to explain:

"When I retreated, before Lucifer was defeated and exiled into the prison I had put together, I was hurt in a way that was entirely novel and not in a good way. I should've explained or said something, I realized that now, but I was tired... and disappointed. In my pain I couldn't see that my sons and daughters were just as hurt as me if not more. I failed to see the most important thing, that despite their age they were still children and they were hurting. I overlooked the fact that the blind obedience imbedded in their very being kept them rooted to their spots under my shadow, unable to evolve and grow into what they were meant to be." He snorted self-deprecantly. "Some father I am."

Castiel seemed looked like he wanted to protest but one look from his Father shut him up faster that Dean had ever seen. It wasn't even a Look, just a plead with His eyes not to speak. Dean started to get the feeling of what kind of obedience God was talking about, the kind that he himself had showed, once upon a time.

"I didn't see, not for a long time." He paused for a bit, lost in thought. "By the time I realized my mistake I knew that I had screwed up," Dean choked and Castiel's eyes were wide like saucers, "and that change was needed. But change, to be effective, can't be forced. Otherwise it would have been an exercise in futility as well as fatal, which wasn't what I was looking for at all."

Harry ignored what sounded suspiciously like 'no shit, Sherlock' from Dean. Dean would be Dean and that was that.

"Yeah, the problem was that I didn't know where to start steering them in the right direction." He confessed with a slight grimace. "In the end it became apparent that, for change to occur, my absence was needed, otherwise they would keep obeying me the same way they had done for millennia."

Dean nodded to show that he understood, sort of. "So how would you disappear? They could feel you, could they not?"

"They could," Harry acquiesced. "There was one way, however."

"You became human," blurted out Castiel before blushing, an honest to God blush. Dean wished he had a camera.

Harry inclined his head. "Almost," He said. "I didn't become anything, I was born like all humans are born."

To the hunters there was no big difference, as demonstrated by their unchanging expressions, but the angel amongst them seemed to disagree, if the gasp and the sudden understanding in those blue eyes were anything to go by. Dean looked at Cass questioningly.

"He was human Dean," reiterated the angel, eyes not leaving his Father, "wholly human. Memoryless, powerless, mortal, fragile, human."

"Spot-on. I was just Harry until I died the first time, at twelve years of age. It wasn't dead long and by the time I returned to my body I couldn't remember anything, not even the fact that I had died. Even so, my human self was changed, however little. I became more intuitive, stronger and a bit more knowledgeable, nothing truly drastic. Then I sacrificed myself at seventeen for the sake of my friends and makeshift family." Harry ignored Dean's look of chagrin. The hunter had never liked that part of the story, the hypocrite. "That time I choose to come back and I did. Once more I had no memories of my true being but I had taken what little power my body could manage as well as a bloody good intuition."

"You mean border-line psychic," scoffed Bobby after an eternity of silence. Harry just smiled at the little sign of trust and acceptance.

Silence ensured and in the middle of the abandoned cemetery it was more than a little unsettling.

"So," started Dean, sick of the silence after minutes of playing ping-pong with their eyes, "that's it? You got what you wanted, right? What happens now?"

_What if god was one of us_  
Just a slob like one of us  
Just a stranger on the bus  
Trying to make his way home  
Just trying to make his way home  
Like a holy rolling stone  
Back up to heaven all alone  
Just trying to make his way home  
Nobody calling on the phone  
Except for the pope maybe in rome

Dean looked uncharacteristically subdued but his words, brash and blunt as they were, held no trace of the anger and betrayal that had been present for the duration of the conversation. It was a relief to Harry to notice this. No matter who or what he was, to Harry Potter family was everything. It had been important before -He hadn't forced His essence into the womb of a woman just for shits and giggles, after all- but now it was everything.

"I wouldn't say that I got what I wanted, I never wanted all this death and suffering Dean," said man looked away, guiltily. "But the first step was taken by Castiel here." Cue big, round eyes full of incredulous surprise. "So yes, in a way I got what I wanted. As for what happens now... " He put his hand in his pockets and fixed a stern look in Dean's direction. "Well, it seems to me like I have two stubborn and stupid cousins to rescue from the Hot spot, as well as a bunch of troublemaking sons to straighten up once and for all." Here he smiled in a way that sent shivers down to everyone's backs. The three of them had a moment of shared pity for the poor sods that were going to be at the end of Harry's odd branch of discipline. It had been bad before, they didn't want to imagine how it would be now. Dean, however, almost immediately forgot about everything but the part that concerned Sammy. And Adam. Somehow he would've to make it up to the kid, right after kicking his ass for being a gullible moron of course.

"And afterwards?" This time it was Castiel who posed the question, his voice embarrassingly small and full of fragile and battered hope. It was so out of character coming from the strong and stoic angel that both humans almost got whiplash in their haste to look at their brother-in-arms. Despite the intensity of the gazes Castiel didn't notice, he was too busy inspecting his shiny shoes. They were nice, he thought; well, Dean hated them but they were comfortable and maybe he should...

"Castiel, your thoughts are tying themselves into knots," warned He lightly. Startled, the angel looked up and was caught by the power behind his Father's eyes. It had been a very long time since Castiel had felt like a child but that was what he was in that moment, entrapped in that ageless gaze.

Harry's body was short, the shortest out of all of them. But that somehow didn't stop Him from extending a hand and ruffling His youngest son hair in the same way He had done it for little Cass' older brothers, a long, long time ago. A contented smile grazed His lips; in spite of the headaches they had caused him, were causing him and would undoubtedly cause him in the near future, he had missed his children.

"Afterwards I suppose we will be busy cleaning up the mess the children left while daddy was away." Dean chucked unabashedly in the background and Bobby snorted and coughed, not quite covering his own laugher. He mock-glared at them before focusing on His angel again and who apparently was trying very hard to have his eyes swallow the rest of his face. He blinked. That should've been physically impossible. Aaanyway... "And as the only available, alive or otherwise reliable Archangel around you'll have your hands full, little Cass."

"Archangel?" Questioned Dean with a raised eyebrow, while closely inspecting the feathered wonder. He didn't look or felt any different, but then again, he wouldn't know.

Castiel shrugged a bit stiffly, his baby blue eyes flickering over to Dean before returning to Harry as if afraid the other would vanish into thin air. Sadly, it wasn't impossible. "It is a new development."

God snorted. "It's a reward. Now come 'ere," He exclaimed far too happily and slung one arm around Dean, who yelped in surprise at the out-of-nowhere action, and the other one around Cass, who chocked in renewed surprise at the contact, "we have some idiots to bust out of prison, punishment to dole out and pranks to plan..." Hey! Gabriel had to come from somewhere you know!

"Whatever you say Shorty," teased Dean, still a bit leery but far more receptive than an hour ago.

"Shut it, Goldilocks," Harry retorted without missing a beat.

"That was one time!" groaned Dean. "Drop it, will ya?"

"No can do, Dean-o."

The banter continued between the two. At some point they had shuffled Cass so the angel was sandwiched between them, looking as bewildered as always, but feeling included in a way even though he wasn't actively participating in the 'discussion'.

They certainly made a strange picture: a new Archangel, a human and God, bickering in the way that only close friends and family could do. And let's not forget Bobby, the always reliable Bobby, who brought the rear of their little procession, shaking his head back and forth in exasperation and fondness, a smile of amusement softening his hardened features into something almost amiable.

"Idjits, all of them," muttered Bobby with the same fondness that was reflected in his dark eyes, totally aware that they could hear him and not caring one wit. The truth was the truth.

_And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good  
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah_


End file.
